


Old Memories

by SectoBoss



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-25
Updated: 2015-03-25
Packaged: 2018-03-19 14:37:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3613659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SectoBoss/pseuds/SectoBoss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As the expedition starts out, Mikkel remembers the dreadful night ten years ago when Kastrup fell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Old Memories

One the first night of the expedition, when everyone else slept, Mikkel picked himself up from his makeshift bed on the floor and went and sat in the driver’s seat of the tank.

Kastrup. It was laid out before him, bleached blue in the moon’s light. That accursed place where his friends had died, where Denmark had been humbled, where the silent world had swatted humanity back like an annoying little fly. Last time he had seen this place it had glowed under halogen bulbs and hummed with the voices of thousands. Now it lay cold and quiet, another little patch of the Earth that was forbidden once more.

The memories came thick and fast, the good and the bad, interspersed like a jumbled photo album.

_-Mikkel Madsen, aged 22 and his healer brassard still new and shiny on the arm of his uniform, sits in the back of an APC as it rolls over the Oresund Bridge.-  
_

_-Scarcely two years later, klaxons sound off across the whole of Oresund Base on a warm winter’s night.-  
_

_-A poker game on a folding table under the stars on his third week, the last round for the whole pot once all but two of them had folded. Him vs an Icelandic mage who claims she can see the future. Odin neglected to inform her of the best poker face in Denmark.-  
_

_-“Red alert, red alert. Green perimeter breached. Fire teams report for immediate exfil to Kastrup base. Medical teams stand by.” Voices on the Oresund tannoy system, harbingers of things to come.-  
_

_-He and a few like-minded soldiers constantly find new ways to make Captain Ibsen’s life a living hell. Highlights include spiking his synthetic coffee with medical-grade stimulants designed to stop people from slipping into comas. This results in the captain trying to pick a fight with a Goliath tank under the impression that it was a ‘well-dressed giant’, much to the bemusement of its crew.-  
_

_-The first APCs and Goliath tanks are rumbling out across the bridge towards the mainland. Mikkel stands on the level above them, watching them go, wondering just how serious things are out there. In the far distance he can hear the tunnel guns firing.-  
_

_-Three nights after that poker game he runs into the mage from Iceland again in the mess. They get to talking.-  
_

_-More tanks leave the base, including the experimental new flame tanks. Massive fuel reservoirs on their turrets make them look like vast beetles crawling across the bridge. The gunfire from Kastrup has intensified. No-one knows what is going on.-  
_

_-Her name is Alma, on loan from the Icelandic Mage Corps to help the Danes cleanse the suburbs around Copenhagen. They swap tales of their lives, of where they’ve been and what they’ve seen and where they hope to go. Once midnight is called they go their separate ways with awkward promises to meet up again sometime.-  
_

_-“Red alert, red alert. Blue perimeter breached. All available personnel report to loading bays for immediate exfil. Medical teams report to your stations.” This is bad, this must be very very bad. Does anyone know what’s going on over there? Has anyone heard from the radio?-  
_

_-To their mutual surprise they do meet again, with increasing regularity. The grumpy Danish healer and the cheerful Icelandic mage become a fixture of life in Kastrup Base. It’s an odd friendship, but it seems to work. Mikkel’s friends tease him, and he is annoyed by this until he realises this is what passes for encouragement in the military.-  
_

_-The first APCs clatter back over the bridge, disgorging wounded and shell-shocked soldiers. Mikkel can see their wounds from the level he is stood on, see the shock and horror and panic on their faces. He comes to a decision. He may be between jobs at the moment but that doesn’t excuse him from responsibility. He sprints off towards the nearest staircase down to the loading bay as fast as his legs will carry him.-  
_

_-One night he steals a bottle of Swedish mead from one of the storerooms and presents it to Alma. It is by all accounts the most awkward attempt at courtship since the fall of the old world, but she is rather charmed by it. They spend the night together.-  
_

_-The loading bay reeks of blood and vomit. Medics with stretchers shuttle back and forth from the APCs like worker ants dismembering a carcass and carrying it home. There are more wounded than doctors by a factor too frightening to compute. Injured soldiers stagger around, dazed and confused. Mikkel grabs the first one he comes across, a teenage boy with sandy hair and freckles. The boy turns his head to reveal half his face is missing.-  
_

_-The months pass, and become a year. Mikkel and Alma, the initial excitement having passed, settle into a comfortable routine. A part of him wonders if what they’re doing could be called dating, but he couldn’t really care less. It works, and he is happy.-  
_

_-More and more APCs are arriving. The odd tank too, wrecked and mangled and barely able to steer. Each one brings a fresh batch of suffering. Mikkel switches off his emotions as best he can. He cleans, he stitches, he bandages, he moves on. Those he cannot help, he does not try to. Their faces will haunt him in the days to come.-  
_

_-One year becomes two. Mikkel starts to wonder how to get a ring delivered to Kastrup Base. On the horizon, winter storms gather.-  
_

_-“Red alert, red alert. Black perimeter breached. Medical teams prepare for infected, highest triage protocols advised. Total evacuation ordered. Demolition crews report to bridge connection stations.” They’re coming, we can’t stop them. Leave the ones you can’t save. We’re blowing the bridge if we have to. This is it.-  
_

_-Of all the things to be fired for! He should get a commendation for how quickly he was able to tie Vice-Admiral Olsen’s braids in a knot while the loud old fart napped during his visit to the base. Fortunately, General Jensen privately thinks it’s hilarious and prevents it from becoming a dishonourable discharge. He says goodbye to his friends and to Alma. She promises to come to Bornholm the moment she gets leave. That damn ring is still in the mail somewhere between Mora and Oresund.-  
_

_-The stream of vehicles becomes a flood. It’s utter chaos. There are pile-ups as APCs slew into one another. Two fall off the bridge and are lost to the seas below. Soldiers are run over by Goliath tanks as their drivers desperately try to get away from Kastrup. Some of the arriving tanks still have bits of meat dangling off them, troll’s arms and giant’s hands, like sick ornaments. The lower decks of Oresund are placed under maximum quarantine. The non-immune wear masks if they can find them, beg to be let out if they can’t.-  
_

_-Mikkel Madsen, aged 24, tosses his healer brassard into the Oresund straits below the base. It’s back to the farm for him, unless he can find something else. He leans on the railings and sighs miserably to himself. In just one week’s time he will lean on these same railings in exhaustion and watch as...-  
_

_-...battleships rain fire onto Kastrup. Old museum pieces pressed back into service by the navy decades ago prowl the straits and fire into the morning mist. The tunnel guns have fallen silent, only these relics remain, hurling old world fury onto the horizon. The water around their hulls churns white as their anti-leviathan drill bits and saw blades whir and spin.-_

_-The medical techniques he uses become more and more barbaric as the night brightens into morning. They are out of bandages, so they use clothes. The cauterising agent runs dry, so someone finds a soldering iron or two. There is no more anaesthetic for the dying – well, the lower levels are basically soundproof. Here’s a gun.-  
_

_\- Afternoon of the second day. Hazmat teams from the upper levels move amongst them, separating out the immune from the not. He is decontaminated in what feels like a UV furnace and allowed up to the top levels of the base. Immediately he is beset upon by hordes of anxious people, personnel and civilians alike, desperate to know if their loved ones have made it. Sir, have you seen my daughter? She’s about your age, small, blonde? My boyfriend, is he down there? Here, that’s him in this picture. Please, have you seen my husband, my mother, my friend, my children? Are they all right?-  
_

_-Two weeks later they post a list of the dead. He does not read it. He does not need to. As a final insult the ring arrives the next day. He throws it into the sea.-  
_

His memories released him, sent him spinning back into the present. He came to with a start and blinked. How long had he been sat there? He checked his watch – only twenty minutes. _That’s enough nostalgia for one evening_ , he thought to himself sternly. He was here on a mission now. The last thing the rest of the team needed was him flaking out.

He got up to go back to bed and nearly jumped out of his skin. Sigrun was sat across the cabin from him, watching him with a mixture of patience and caution.

“Gods _damn_ it, woman!” Mikkel hissed. “Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

Sigrun, to her credit, did not ask him what was wrong or if he was ok. She’d watched him stare miserably about at the ruins for almost half an hour and had put two and two together long ago.

Mikkel sensed her concern. “I’ll be fine,” he whispered as reassuringly as he could. “Just some old memories… you know…” he said a little lamely. Sigrun nodded. She understood. Mikkel supposed she must have lost people over the years as well. “Busy day tomorrow,” she murmured at last. It was the quietest Mikkel had ever heard her speak. “Better get some rest.”

He gave her a lopsided grin. “Yes, captain,” he said. In reply Sigrun smirked and did a mock-salute before disappearing back into the crew compartment of the tank. He made to follow her.

_-Mikkel Madsen, aged 34, in a new uniform and a new life, looks across the silent world and permits himself a small smile.-_

Enough of the old memories. Time to make some new ones.


End file.
